e him confess to
accepting large sum from agent of C---- to send you on wrong track. Making
inquiries and hope let you know in few hours whether C---- really gone; if
so, which direction. Advise you stop Algeciras till hear from me again. Am
sending on luggage there."

"A few hours!" I was beginning to know too well what a few hours could
mean in Spain where, to a population of philosophers it mattered nothing
if a thing happened to-morrow or the day after.

Gibraltar was empurpled with night and sequined with ten thousand lights
when the next telegram arrived--a message which covered two telegraph
forms.

"Just learned C---- left to-day for Granada with same party. Took train, and
whether shipped automobile not found out. C---- believed to be ill. Friend
at club says C---- been heard say knows at Granada man worth twenty
physicians, natural bone-setter, herb doctor. Perhaps wishes consult this
person. Illness seems mysterious. House of C---- well known at Granada.
Inquire at Washington Irving, where suppose you will stay. Will wire or
write to that address."

I should have been off within the hour, but the quickest way of reaching
Granada was by Ronda, and there was no road for automobiles. One could
walk, one could ride, along a bridle path through gorges unsurpassed for
grandeur; but it was an expedition of two days, whereas if we could curb
our impatience until early morning, we would reach Ronda by train in about
four hours.

Not being quite mad, we waited, rose at five, and before seven were
steaming out of Algeciras, while the great cloud-cataract of the Levanter
churned and boiled over Gibraltar. On a truck, travelling by the same
train, was my brave Gloria, none the worse for yesterday's wild flight,
and ready for another when she could take the road beyond Ronda. I had not
ceased yet to wonder at the expedition with which she had been shipped.
Dick discovered, however, that the manager of the line was a Scotsman, a
kind of fairy godfather for all the region round, which explained the
mystery; and his road was wonderful. In a glass coach, which was an
"observation car," we tore through scenery so diversified that it might
have been chosen from the finest bits of a whole continent. There were
wooded ravines tapestried with pink sweetbrier; there were far hill-towns
like flocks of gulls resting on the edge of giddy precipices; there were
strange old fortresses; ruined Moorish castles; velvet-green fields wit